A businessman was climbing the steep stairway called the advanced stairway to Atago Jinja

Businessman on the steep stairway to Atago Jinja — Steep stairway to Atago Jinja

Passing through the torii gate standing by the side of the road, a steep staircase appears before my eyes. This is the stairway leading to Atago Jinja Shrine, which was built in 1603 on the orders of Tokugawa Ieyasu and sits atop Atago Mountain. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, one can see that the stairs indeed lead in a straight line to the top of the mountain. However, the area has buildings taller than Atago Mountain, so it hardly feels like a mountain nowadays. At best, it is a small hill. Atago is the highest mountain in the 23 wards of Tokyo at 25.7 meters above sea level, but it is only the highest naturally formed mountain in the city. The artificially created Mount Hakone in Shinjuku is higher in elevation, and the Musashino Plateau, although not a mountain, is over 30 meters high.

Since I arrived early in the morning, there were few people going up and down the stairs. When I looked up, I saw a businessman slowly climbing the stairs. This staircase is called the "stone staircase of success. The name comes from a legend that a samurai named Heikuro Magaki once rode up and down these stone steps on his horse and was awarded by the Shogun Iemitsu. This businessman may be secretly plotting his success by climbing the stone steps early in the morning.

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